Authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for information about the weekend slayings of Manu Smith, seen in this photo, and his friend, Harry Lovengood.

NEWARK — The Essex County Sheriff’s Crime Stoppers program is offering a $10,000 reward for information about the fatal shootings of two men in Newark on the weekend.

The bodies of Manu Smith, 24, and Harry Lovengood, 21, were discovered early Saturday near West Bigelow Street and Milford Avenue.

The reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the slayings was announced today by acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray and Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Essex County prosecutor’s Homicide Task Force tip line at 1-877-847-7423.

Smith, of Hillside, had been a student with the Newark Boys Chorus School and traveled overseas pursuing his love of music, his parents said in an interview this weekend. He was awarded a scholarship to attend the Hudson School, a private preparatory high school in Hoboken and spent a year at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.

“He wasn’t one of the normal statistics,” said his mother, Malikita Wright. “He wasn’t in no gang. The only thing contributing (to his death) is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Lovengood lived in Newark and graduated from Elizabeth High School in 2010.